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My path is not that much different than others that have commented.First and foremost, in my early years I focused on my education. I picked the USAF because it pushed off-duty education. For years that is all I did: work and then school. And being that i paid for each class as I went, I graduated debt-free.Don’t be afraid to use community colleges for your first two years of college. I did that and it worked out quite well (look at my job title)Second, I picked a career that pays actual money (we are talking about climbing the socioeconomic ladder. If you are not interested in doing that, that's your decision…). Yes, we know you were good at basketball or singing in high school. What what is the odds you are going to be in the MBA, have a hit record or thank the academy? Yet I have a coworker that sang in the evenings for some decent pocket money. But his day job was an engineer.My hobbies as a kid were technology based.I married someone who was supportive of this. When I got married, I had only completed my first AAS degree. Afterward, I completed my AS in Engineering and then my four-year degree.I often worked 2 jobs. Most of the time, the second job was used to pay down purchases so we could eliminate debt as quickly as possible. My second wife was even more supported of this, she worked part-time to pay off my car loan, and then every cent went to paying off the mortgage. If we found lose change in the sofa, it went to paying off the mortgage. Being debt free is quite liberating.We never bought anything “consumer” on credit. All credit cards were paid off monthly. If we wanted a new TV, we simply saved until we had enough.9/12/19 Edit: Please keep in mind my goal was to be solidly middle class, not wealthy in the way Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or other tech pioneers are. When I was a kid, our family was not poor by any means, but an engineering career is considered above average. I’m content with that.4/5/20 Edit: After reflecting on several other answers, success is as much not doing anything stupid as much as anything else. Some bells just can be unrung (a criminal record from a drug bust or DUI, or have a child at 17). Others, like addiction often have a rocky road to recover from.I shared Matthew Bates blessing of being considered unattractive in high school, but was able to mitigate that pain with a good after-school job that paid me $18/hr in 2020 dollars.

“Man, I’ve another 50 years of this shit…”That one sentence was spoken by myself, to myself, in my car, as I pulled up outside my house, February 3rd 2016.I have suffered from depression for 35 years. I can go months, sometimes years, without an episode, but in 2013 my wife, my soul mate, my best friend, left me after 15 years, which plunged me into the worst episode of my life.Now, whilst depression is a living hell at times, I never actually feel sorry for myself. It’s a different emotion altogether, as anyone who suffers the same will testify. But this particular day, I was feeling sorry for myself. My business had gone to the wall in the first 12 months of separation. In the second 12 months I was struggling to pay the bills. By the end of year 3 I had £2 in the bank, was in desperate arrears with my mortgage and my new business was bringing in barely £200 a week.I pulled up outside my house at 5pm, knowing the rest of the night would, yet again, be spent sat alone, in the cold, with the constant memories of my wife and children walking around the house, ghosts of their laughter echoing around, heart and mind being tormented by all that had gone before. There was little food in the cupboard. No credit for gas on the meter and low credit for electricity on that meter.And this was the lowest point, it was 3 years of decline to this moment. I had no way of getting out of the mess I was in. No way I could figure, anyway. For the first time, this time I felt sorry for myself and literally said out loud, “man, I’ve another 50 years of this shit.”That was the moment everything changed. I turned the engine off and lit a rare cigarette. I continued to talk to myself in the car - partly out loud, partly in my head. The conversation (with myself) went along these lines…“50 years… ha, great… and I’m 50 years old next year (2017). Well, hang on… if I’m 50 next year, then I am only half way through my life. If I do live to be 100 - and why not ? - then next year, my 50th birthday, is the start of part 2. Mmmm… well if that’s the case then :1 - I don’t need to buy a house - already bought one, only 5 years off completion (if I can find a way to keep the reposession order at bay). In 5 years, I will have property worth £130,000. Fully paid up. Hey, imagine if I had that when I was 5 years old, how cool that would have been for a start in life !2 - I don’t have to go to school for 15 years - I’ve done that, I’ve got an education, done college, done university… I’ve got a head start !3 - I don’t have to get married and have children - I have 3 wonderful children who are doing well and I’ve had the snip, so no need to have any more… no stress and strain of raising babies. Ace !4 - I don’t need to buy a car or learn to drive - already sorted.5 - I don’t need to worry about making friends or being popular or liked - I have a fantastic circle of friends who love me and I love them.6 - I don’t have to worry about my parents leaving me, I already have had the sadness of losing them.7 - I don’t need to worry about a job. I have the potential in my new business to make a comfortable living, if and when I am mentally strong enough to fully apply myself.… and so on and so forth…”Now I am having this conversation with myself in my car and I can literally feel the stress, the pain, the depression leaving my body. I am getting genuinely excited at the way my mind is working. I go into the house and continue this conversation whilst making a coffee. I get a notepad and make notes of what I am saying. Every note, every little idea, is scribbled down so as not to be forgotten.As the evening progresses, I find myself going through each room in the house, removing any trace of my wife’s existance. Every memory gets either boxed up for the children to enjoy in the future, or goes in the bin. The kitchen gets emptied - I keep 3 cups, 3 plates, 3 knives, forks etc, for me and the 2 youngest children when they visit. The rest of the clutter gets binned. The living room is re-arranged. The bedroom is rearranged. The bathroom is rearranged. This carries on through to maybe 5am…… For the first time in 3 years, I go to bed with an exhausted smile and wake up a few hours later with that same smile. I carry on where I left off. I borrow a couple of hundred pounds off my brother to get rid of furniture and replace with cheap “get by for a while” furniture, that has no trace of my marriage attached to it. I carry on writing notes.Well, over the next 2 -3 months, remarkable changes happen. By the end of the 3rd month, at my medical check up, I am taken off my blood pressure tablets, my BP being normal for the first time in 3 years. The following month, after slowly cutting back, I am off my anti-depressants, also for the first time in 3 years, the longest I have been there in my life. I have lost over a stone in fat. My business is taking off as I am able to focus on it and money is coming in again.By November, 9 months on, I have cleared my debts and I have £4,000 saved. My friends tell me I have a “happy house”. That they feel the positive juju the second they come in the door. They want to know (part jokingly, and part enviously) why I now walk round with a permanent smile, like a village idiot. More than anything though, they are genuinely delighted that they have got “me” back.But let’s go back to Part 2.The whole trigger for this was the realisation that if I live to be 100, I am only halfway through my life. So I started adding to the notes I had already started. This time, not marking down things I didn’t have to go through, but things that I am going to do. Each page of things to do is broken down into what I need to do to get there. There are wild things that I may not be skilled enough to do, like publish a novel. I may never be as good as Jimi Hendrix on the guitar. But what is there to stop me doing the best I can do with both ? Then there are totally achievable goals, like buying a campervan and spending 3 months on the road, enjoying life and writing that novel ? Getting married again, now that my heart is mending and I am meeting lovely ladies again - why not ? Decorating and renovating the house. Expanding the business. Getting fit. Losing a bit more weight. Learning to fly a plane. Doing a new degree in something I really enjoy. So many places to visit, to enjoy, to experience.It’s all there and it’s all ahead of me and I know it’s all down to me. But most importantly, after the 9 months that have just gone by and how my life has already changed so much, I know it’s totally achievable !So… “man, I’ve another 50 years of this shit” is the single, most important sentence that has changed my life, hopefully forever. Because I’m proving it wrong. And life has rarely felt better.(I have missed out a section about a girl, I’ll call her “W”, who added a lot of fuel to this fire right at the beginning. She may read this and/or some people may know her, so I shouldn’t mention her by name. But, without knowing it, she made me want to be a better person (thanks Jack Nicholson) too. We never dated, or anything like that… but she is one of the most beautiful souls I have come across. Thank you “W” for your inspiration.)Best wishes all of you reading this. I wish you a long and happy life.Rob.EDIT : One week on. Many thanks to the thousands of members who have read this and upvoted it. I am genuinely touched at the response this has had. I’ve replied to many comments below, but I’m going to have to ease off for a while. I will carry on reading and commenting as soon as I can, some of the posts have really brought a warm glow to my heart - thank you, thank you so much.EDIT #2 : A couple of commentors have asked “why did your marriage fail” / “how did you sort your finances out” - I’ve answered those questions in the comments section below.(Still single, by the way, ladies !)

Personally, I never block the comments on my answers, and I welcome discussion from people who disagree. I try to answer all the comments when I can, but sometimes I don't have the time, and the Quora algorithm is not very good, so some I just never seeI’ve had some extremely interesting discussions in the quora comment section that changed my mind, notably on things like gun control and min wage.It happens often that people comment stuff that is quite aggressive, or insulting, but then I just keep talking to them, and point out that the insult is irrelevant, and ask why they are not addressing the main point?People usually either calm down and have a discussion, or move on once they see that their insults are useless.Asking questions also works really well, it makes people more introspective and less defensive. Often people who have very strong opinions can become more nuanced and rational if you ask for more details about certain stuff, and if you can go down and find something to agree upon, you can then follow it back up.Like if I speak to someone who maintains that there should only be free markets and no government intervention, I will often ask about things like roads, and patents. How exactly they think private roads would work, what happens if someone builds 4 roads circling your house and charges a million dollars for using them, stuff like that. If they don’t want free market roads (they often don’t), then we can go towards why that should not be a market, and if maybe some other things are also like that?Do they want to abolish patents, and encourage competition? Are they saying that government must get involved to promote innovation and that just markets would not work?Overall, I had to block a whole of 2 people who were just not giving up on posting personal insults that failed to address the point.I don’t remember what happened with the first one, the second one was on something I wrote about rent seeking, he was someone who was buying up houses and expecting the tenants to pay his entire mortgage, and felt personally attacked by the idea that perhaps if someone else is working to pay off the mortgage, then that person should be the one owning the house.I’m a little sad it had to come to that, but with nearly 10 million views on the stuff I wrote, it’s not a huge deal.Honestly, it seems that a lot of the time, when people post stuff and disable the comments, they are just living in a bubble, and trying hard to keep living in a bubble.Often, it’s very biased, partisan political stuff, where they insult someone, and then disable the comments.It seems a bit childish to me.If you can’t handle people responding to what you say, maybe you should not be saying it at all. If you know it’s nothing constructive, and just an incitation to hatred, well, maybe rewrite it differently?Also, what is up with your ego? Is it really that fragile?For me, if someone online calls me an idiot, well, I really don’t care.I can’t ever be wrong.I’m me.At most, some of the stuff that I think or said or posted is wrong.But me as a human being? I’m still just me.I don’t really define myself by a certain opinion or idea, so should that idea be wrong, well, I can update it, and then I’m still me, nothing changed.I learn stuff quite regularly, and it happens often that learning something new changes the way I think.If you are not emotionally invested in certain ideas, defining yourself through them, then it’s not really that difficult.I’ve had some very nice people point out that I had posted incorrect information, and I really appreciate that. I remember one guy in particular who “schooled” me.Thank you! I learnt something that day.I’d had incorrect assumptions, and those assumptions were shown to be incorrect.It took a couple of comments for me to realize it, but his gentle insistence was incredibly valuable.Often, it's more minor stuff, like the other week, I wrote 0.0001%, instead of writing 0.0001 of […].Someone in the comments pointed out my mistake, and I was able to edit the post and correct it. They were 100% right in pointing this out, I’m happy that they did.